The present invention provides a board game that simulates the well known game of horseshoe pitching and that uses dice to select among the many possible outcomes of a pitch.
A number of games have been invented that employ dice, spinners, shuffled decks of option cards, or other random number generators to select a play option in a board game that simulates a sport or other game. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,426, for example, Seitz provides a simulation of the game of bowling in which both dice and cards are employed to select possible outcomes of the action of rolling a bowling ball down a lane toward an array of pins. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,822,043 provides a simulation of the game of baseball in which cards are used to select statistically likely play results. In like manner, U.S. Pat. No. 4,241,924 teaches a simulation of olympic sports, U.S. Pat. No. 4,106,774 teaches a simulation of golf via the use of polyhedral dice, while U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,093,238, 4,060,246, and 3,951,412 all teach means of simulating horse racing. Clearly, a great number of selections is possible both in choosing a game or sport to simulate and in selecting the exact method of simulation.
Board games that use dice, such as the well known and ancient game of backgammon, often use small cups, boxes or other mixing chambers to ensure fair throws of the dice and to prevent a skilled player from controlling the outcome of his toss by holding the dice in his hand and throwing them in a controlled way. Some games provide chutes that the dice are dropped down to mix them. Notable among these games is the one taught by Stackmayr in U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,486, wherein a dice chute that simulates a silo is used both to mix the dice and to display the results of a dice toss in a farming simulation game.
In the great majority of dice games, scoring each throw involves summing the numbers of spots on the top surface of each of a player's dice. Lamie, however, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,743,031, teaches a dice game in which the outcome of a round of the game is determined by a process that involves, inter alia, matching the indicia on dice thrown by competing players.
One popular outdoor game that has heretofore not been simulated as a board game is that of horseshoe pitching. The players in this game take turns throwing horseshoes at a peg in the ground that is 40 feet away. Horseshoes that come to rest within 6 inches of the peg are eligible for scoring, and may count for one point. Horseshoes that come to rest so that the peg is inside the arc of the shoe are called "ringers", and may be worth three points. Subsequently thrown horseshoes may move a previously thrown shoe either into or out of a scoring position. After each of two player has thrown a pair of horseshoes, the positions of the shoes are noted, and the turn is scored using a cancellation algorithm.